Remix - these days has become synonymous with making a cacophony of older compositions of high musical standing. The disturbing trend has started eroding the minds of newer listeners who may, if ignorant about the classics, start hating them baselessly simply because the only version of the classic they heard was a bad inharmonious effort from a wastrel of an arranger.

Lyrics form another domain where the value seems to be getting lost especially in tamil and telugu. Meaningless words with some stupid rhyme like:

"kaNNum kaNNum nOkia
cappuccino cofee ya
sofia "

are flooding the music scene. Songs like "arigori bonsaai samba nellaalE" which feature gibberish are better only than the vulgar songs like "aakalesthe" (nee rent kodutha tent pOdalaam)". In the movie Shankarabharanam there is a scene where 'Dasu' tries to 'teach' the kid a new variant of Brochevarevarura. His insistence on remixing the song in a speedy trendy (we are talking about late 70s here) way, incurs the attention and wrath of Shankara Shastri (Somayajulu). Shastri explains how each and every syllable of the great classical compostions brims with life. He explains how every aksharam has a distinct swaram and naadam and how one must not ruin the original in the name of remixing it.

I was of the opinion that this movie stressed only on the "holier-than-thou attitude" about Indian classical music until I saw this clip:

The director K. Vishwanath through the character of Shankara Shastri explains how one should approach and perform music with dedication be it western or Indian. That, I thought was a great piece of advice. What do we do with the musical giant that is S.P.B ? See how he effortlessly sings the 'pop' portions ? I don't know anything about western singing, but I can certainly recognize a voice which can effortlessly transition through octaves with ease and utmost clarity. It may be that he won the National award for Shankara Naada Shareera Para. But I think the movie has many bits like these which never got popular but featured some excellent singing (Remember - punjai uNdu nanjai uNdu humming of SPB in unnaal mudiyum thambi?).

As a tribute to the situation in the movie which featured the comical Dasu and serious Shastri, my friends and I here present you with both the dialogue and the song. For this, I requested Narayanan and Vamsi - two good singers in their own right - to recreate the situation. And that they did beautifully with Vidya who also joined me in rendering the song. And I need to acknowledge their guidance in pronunciation. The original had a few minor mistakes done by the lead singers and Vidya and I have tried to sing the song with the right words (with help from vamsi).

With Meera's help we seem to sound better than we actually do. And for the rest of the series too Meera has graciously accepted to mix. Thank you Meera.